Fresh audio product: Trump, Israeli public opinion, the meaning of Ukraine
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): November 7, 2024 DH comments on the Trump victory, especially the role of inflation • Dahlia Scheindlin on Israeli public opinion • James Foley and Vladimir Unkovski-Korica, authors of this article, on the role of Ukraine in the Western political imagination
Fresh audio product: Gaza and the larger political context; why people hate inflation
Just added to my radio archive (click on date for link): May 23, 2024 Mouin Rabbani on the war on Gaza, and the broader context of the Israel–Palestine conflict • Stefanie Stantcheva on why people hate inflation (papers here and here)
Vibecession over
Though I’m certainly not the first to make this observation, it looks like the “vibecession” is over. The term was coined in June 2022 by multimedia economic analyst Kyla Scanlon (drawing on Keynes but also the poetry of Charles Bukowski), who defined it as “a disconnect between consumer sentiment and economic data. So basically, the economy is doing fine, but people are absolutely not feeling fine.” By recent measures, people are starting to feel somewhat finer, if not bounce-off-the-walls fine. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index rose 6.8 points in January to its highest level… Read More
Oil and gasoline prices move together
I keep seeing people on social media saying things like, “Well oil prices are down but gasoline prices are still high.” Look, the last thing I want to do is defend the fossil fuel industry. It should be put out of business as soon as possible because it’s a threat to civilization and maybe human life itself. But on this point, the social media pundits are wrong. For example, in August 2013, crude oil (as measured by West Texas Intermediate, the US benchmark) was $107 a barrel and the average gasoline price… Read More
Nation pieces: inflation, AI
I had a couple of pieces in (on?) The Nation, recently. The first is on inflation, which is real, not easy to solve, and a potential problem for a green agenda. The standard remedy—raising interest rates and provoking a recession—would be disastrous in an economy still recovering from the Covid shock. But we can’t deny that huge deficit spending and an infusion of trillions of dollars conjured out of nothing has something to do with the problem. The deficit spending financed a remarkably generous, though too temporary, aid package. It boosted household… Read More
The Fed and the class struggle
Mike Konczal assembles some striking quotes from Federal Reserve transcripts showing how obsessed the monetary overlords are with keeping wages down. I won’t recycle any of the quotes—check out his post for the full flavor. Reading these, Mike wonders what the contribution of the Fed has been to wage stagnation over the last few decades. My sense is, not much since Volcker left in 1987. There’s no doubt that the Volcker crackdown of 1979–82, with a second-wave attack in 1984–85, did cause a major shift in the relative power of capital and labor. What… Read More
Fed sees a gloomier future
The Federal Reserve is just out with its latest economic projections. Since the last edition in June, they’ve turned gloomier for the short, medium, and long term. They see growth as slower, and unemployment as higher, for 2011, 2012, 2013, and for the “longer run” than they did just three months ago. For this year, they’re looking for GDP growth to average 1.6–1.7%, compared with a projection of 2.7–2.9% in June. They see unemployment as staying in its current 9.0–9.1% range, instead of falling into the high 8s. For next year, they… Read More
LBO News from Doug Henwood 